My husband used to travel regularly on business. When the kids were little, people often expressed their sympathy for me. “It must be so difficult to single parent.” I would receive generous offers of meals and other types of assistance, because I have awesome people in my life.
But all this support made me nervous. The first trip, I remember steeling myself for the worst. Sure, he had gone on overnight fishing jaunts and the like, but an entire week with just me and the kids? That seemed daunting.
I don’t know why I worried. I was a full-time, stay-at-home mother who was homeschooling, doing many hours of volunteer work, managing a menagerie of misfit animals and an adolescent posing as my husband, all while maintaining my sanity (mostly) and not becoming an alcoholic (yet).
Taking away one responsibility, one giant, needy responsibility, for seven days, was like a freaking vacation.
The kids followed their regular routines and we went about our lives as we always did. Except, when dinner time rolled around, I didn’t have to make a big, balanced meal, preferably harvested from our vast, unwieldy garden. We ate when we were hungry and then had something light in the evening, to get us through the night. There was less laundry to wash, dry and fold, no lunch to pack, no clothes to set out and best of all, no alarm clock at 4 a.m. As a matter of fact, since we were homeschooling, there was no alarm of any kind. So really it was like vacation cubed.
But time goes by and jobs change. The quarterly trips dwindled away. Now, week long trips are infrequent. When they do come along, we are out of practice and there is no routine. And preparing Brian for travel is akin to preparing a nervous rabbit. He’s unsure of what’s going on, but he knows he doesn’t like it and thinks the best defense is to just freeze.
When he was scheduled to leave last Saturday, I guess he was hoping I wouldn’t notice that, though I left him home and assumed sole responsibility for running the kids to all their many Saturday classes so he could prepare, pack and make a list of anything he was missing, when I came home three hours later he was playing Clash of Clans on his phone, while resting on the couch.
Okay, well we still had a bit of time, so his lack of motivation wasn’t too disturbing (just super irritating). So we began the process and, with my help, quickly filled the two allowed bags and had a comprehensive list of necessary items we needed to purchase.
At this point, I was beginning to feel a little stressed. I had to go retrieve our child from parkour, take him for a haircut and now, shop for the things Brian needed, all before our son’s basketball game in Port Jefferson. Time was running low so I decided we needed to divide and conquer. I would go to the barbershop with the boy and Brian would go to the library to get some reading material for the long flight to Las Vegas. The youngest decided she would stay home so I left for the barber while Brian packed up the library books.
If you want to get in and out of the barber quickly, I highly recommend going midday on a Saturday during a torrential downpour. Surprisingly, there was no one else there.
The fast haircut was a welcome gift and I felt my anxiety decreasing. Until I got home and no one was there. Not a single person. Remember, My youngest child had exercised her new-found freedom and said she was staying home, yet she was not there. Logic suggested that she changed her mind and took a trip to the library, so a quick text to the husband would surely clear all this up.
Except he didn’t answer the text. Or the three phone calls, made in quick succession. I lost precious time driving to the library (did I mention it was pouring rain?) to be sure my child was alive and accounted for and not kidnapped and crying hysterically for me while I sat blissfully laughing at Facebook shenanigans in the barber’s waiting area — an image conjured up by my insane mother brain.
As it turns out, she was indeed alive and well, perusing the stacks in the young adult room. After verifying this, I headed back home to grab my shopping list, the schedule all but destroyed. Oh yeah, we were also supposed to take the fam out to shop for our Christmas tree. At this point, that was a pipe dream and I summarily cut it from the list.
You’ve heard of Murphy’s Law, right? It says that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. It seems Murphy was having a good ole time with us because though I would like to blame my husband’s partial deafness from years as a construction worker for him not hearing my texts and calls, it seems he was innocent. Of that charge, anyway. Instead, he had lost his phone, his brand new iPhone, just about 12 hours before he was to leave on his trip.
I spent precious time canceling service, filing insurance claims and activating and old phone, all before driving 45 minutes to that basketball game.
“This phone is tiny,” he complained. Seriously? Murder was not out of the question.
It was a great game and I had calmed down by the time we stopped for dinner. After all, he’s never lost a cell phone before and of course, it wasn’t intentional. It was just bad timing and we all have those kind of days. I was starting to find my zen.
Then we got home. While I spent my Saturday night customizing and ordering Christmas cards, Brian groomed himself and packed away the last of the items I had picked up at the store. Since the alarm was scheduled to start shrieking at 5 a.m., I planned to get to bed early and was exhausted when I stumbled into the bathroom to brush my teeth. And found a sink full of standing water. My clean-shaven husband shrugged his shoulders.
Defeated, I asked, “Can you grab the drain cleaner?”
“We’re out.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’re out’?”
“We’re out. I thought you knew that.”
“No I didn’t freaking know that! If I knew that, we wouldn’t be out!”
It was getting ugly. And it wasn’t looking like it was going to pretty-up anytime soon. Griffing Hardware is the only place that sells the one drain cleaner that works. It was 9:30 p.m. on Saturday and they’re closed on Sunday. It seemed we had a few days of kitchen-sink-toothbrushing in our future.
The funniest (and by funniest I mean not-funny-at-all) part of all of this is that come 7:42 a.m., Brian would be speeding down a runway, a world away from the shite show he left behind for me to clean up, insurance claims and clogged drains nothing but a faded memory.
This is why I drink.
I still had a full Sunday ahead of me after my chauffeuring duties in the pre-dawn hours. It seems the children didn’t want to wait until January for the Christmas decorations and there was another basketball game on the schedule. Oh, and we ran out of dog food. Did I mention that the sink was clogged?
I’ve decided that preparing for Brian’s trip is no longer worth the week of bliss. I think he should just stay home and clean something or drive a kid somewhere or otherwise make himself useful. Or at the very least, do his own damn laundry when he gets home.
It’s super easy to make your own laundry soap. Not only does it give you control over the ingredients, it’s way less expensive then the natural brands. I prefer liquid, though it takes up more storage room than powder. Wellness Momma has both of the recipes I like in one place so if you prefer something more compact, you can check out her recipe for the powdered version. Here’s the one I like for liquid:
Ingredients:
Washing Soda (Arm and Hammer Brand available at most stores)
Borax (20 Mule Team Borax available at most grocery stores)
Bar Soap (Dr. Bronner’s, Ivory, or other natural, unscented bar soap)
Grate one bar of soap with cheese grater or food processor.
Put grated soap in pan with 2 quarts water and gradually heat, stirring constantly until soap is completely dissolved.
Put 4.5 gallons of really hot tap water in a 5-gallon bucket (available for free in bakeries at grocery stores, just ask them) and stir in 1 cup of borax and 1 cup of Washing Soda until completely dissolved.
Pour soap mixture from pan into 5-gallon bucket. Stir well.
Cover and leave overnight.
Shake or stir until smooth and pour into gallon jugs or other containers.
Use 1/2 to 1 cup per load.
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Except for the dirty clothes and Elvis salt-and-pepper shakers — gifts that keep on giving. Feel free to share your travel adventures with me.
